Captain Campbell, then and long after widely known as Port Fairy Campbell, was their principal superintendent of fleets and fisheries, farms and stores. He, in the pre-land-sale days, like John Mostyn, "bare rule over all that land"; and, moreover, if legends are true, "on those who misliked him he laid strong hand." His sway was for many a league of sea and shore unquestioned, and no "leading case" will carry down his memory to budding barristers. He never, however, relinquished his faith in prompt personal redress, and years afterwards, when harbour-master in Hobson's Bay, regretted to me that the etiquette of the civil service forbade him to convince a contumacious shipmaster by the simple whaling argument. Among his lieutenants, John and Charles Mills held the highest traditional rank. The brothers, natives of Tasmania, were splendid men physically, and as sailors no bolder or better hands ever trod plank or handled oar. Years afterwards I made one of a crowd assembled on the Port Fairy beach to watch a vessel encountering at her anchors the fury of a south-easterly gale. A wild morning, I trow; the sky red-gloomy with storm-clouds; the fierce tempest beating down the crests of the leaping eager billows; the air full of a concentrated wrath which prevented all sounds save its own from being audible. It was impossible that the barque could ride the gale out, and, in anticipation, the skipper had all his sails bent and merely made fast with spun-yarn. The supreme moment came. After a hurricane-blast which transcended all former air-madness, we saw the vessel quit her position. A hundred voices shouted, "Her anchors are gone!" In an instant, as it seemed to us, every sail was unfurled, and she swung round, with her stem towards the white line of ravening breakers. We had before us the unusual spectacle of a ship with every stitch of canvas set going before the wind, and such a wind, dead on to a lee shore. Proudly and swift she came gallantly on, while we watched, half-breathless, to see her strike. A sudden pause, a total arrest. The good ship struggled for a space, like a sentient creature in the toils, then broached to, and the wild, triumphant waves broke over her from stem to stern. But the situation had been foreseen. A dozen willing hands dragged out one of the whaleboats, and what sea ever ran which a whaleboat could not live in? She was safely, though with desperate exertion, launched, and we soon watched her rising and falling amid the tremendous rollers that came thundering in. At her stern was the tall form of Charley Mills standing unmoved with a 16-foot steer oar in his strong grasp, one of the grandest exhibitions of human strength, skill, and courage that eyes ever looked on.